Snapchat introduces World Lenses to app

After the recent news hit that Instagram Stories have surpassed Snapchat Stories in daily users, one would be forgiven for thinking that the meteoric rise of Snapchat may be coming to an end. Perhaps this launch is a timely response to this news and also to Facebook’s recent launch of what is essentially a Snapchat Stories clone with Facebook Stories.

World Lenses is essentially augmented reality filters that overlay the real world with 3D objects within the app. Users will be familiar with this concept if they have ever used Pokemon Go or any other app that uses augmented reality. Snapchat describes this feature can help users “paint the world” in the blog post on this release, perhaps a less challenging way of describing the augmented reality experience.

We will wait and see how long it takes for Snap’s competitors to react with their own versions. Either way, it seems Snapchat is certainly not finished trailblazing in this space.